Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Remembering the Important Hainan Island Story

Commander of the US Northern
Command Admiral William Gortney said on Tuesday that any time a country
has nuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach the US
homeland, “it’s a concern of mine,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The US said that the Chinese submarines are deployed in the South China Sea at a base on Hainan Island.

Actually China has very few nuclear weapons which they use as a deterrent force. In the past China had these nuclear weapons buried underground. But after the US pulled out of the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty with Russia in 2001, and rapidly began developing and testing "missile defense" (MD) systems, China was forced to start moving their nukes onto submarines to make their deterrent capability survivable.

The connection here is that MD is the shield that would be used after a Pentagon first-strike attack is launched to take out Chinese (or Russian) nuclear forces. After the first-strike sword attempts to take out Chinese underground nukes the MD systems mission would be to pick off any retaliatory strike thus giving the US a "successful" first-strike.

Once China began moving their nukes onto submarines the US started claiming that China was expanding its military so it could attack the American continent. I've often heard our politicians in Maine saying, "Oh my god, China is expanding their Navy so we need more Aegis destroyers to counter that move." These destroyers in Maine are outfitted with MD systems so you can see how US escalation causes a response by China that is then used by US politicians to justify further counter-escalation. All of that helps build fear and confusion back here at home and leads to endless increases in the already bloated Pentagon budget. Social programs then have to be cut to pay for the additional military spending.

Note above that the US Navy says that China is porting their subs on Hainan Island. It is important to remember that China's naval reconnaissance system on Hainan Island was built by the American weapons corporation Lockheed-Martin following a US spy plane incident in 2001.

In 2001 George W. Bush sent a slow lumbering propeller driven Navy EP-3 signals intelligence aircraft bumping up along China's coast. The Chinese scrambled interceptor jets and the planes collided killing one Chinese pilot. The EP-3 was forced down onto Hainan Island and after 10 days the American crew was sent home. China took the spy plane apart, kept the high-tech equipment, and sent the rest of the plane back to the US in crates. The incident took place ten weeks after the inauguration of Bush as president and was his first foreign policy crisis. It was a signal to China that the US was going to increase its military aggressiveness toward the Beijing government. China then hired Lockheed-Martin to build their naval recon system so Beijing could better see what was happening with US military moves along their coastline. (The Navy EP-3 spy plane was also built by Lockheed-Martin so the weapons company was making money off both sides of the street.)

Just because China has nuclear capability does not mean they will use it. China has not shown an aggressive history of attacking other nations. In fact it is the US since WW II that has increased its military operations around the world frequently attacking sovereign nations like Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Serbia, Somalia, Grenada, Haiti, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya and eastern Ukraine.

It should also be remembered that the US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons against another nation when it dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan near the end of WW II.

It is the US that is currently "pivoting" 60% of its military forces into the Asia-Pacific in order to control and dominate China. As a result of the pivot (or 'rebalancing' as they call it these days in Washington) more ports-of-call, barracks for troops, and airfields are needed for US forces. Thus we see the Pentagon expanding bases of operation in Hawaii, Okinawa, Australia, Guam, Philippines, and South Korea. On Jeju Island in South Korea a naval base is being built to port US aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and Aegis destroyers. In many of these places active resistance to US military operations is growing.

Since Beijing imports a high percentage of their oil on ships via the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea the Pentagon intends to create the military capability to blockade that vital shipping route thus holding a gun to China's head.

The comments by Admiral William Gortney reveal the deception, the slight of hand, that the US uses to disguise its own aggressive intentions. People increasingly understand this and are rejecting the notion that the US, on behalf of corporate capital, should rule the world.